Saturday, September 10, 2016

NOTE TO READERS: This
will be the final post about the move from Alaska to New Mexico. It’s time to
move on to more current things such as the battle of the barn bats and battles
with batty neighbors. Click the links to read the first post, or second post if
curious about how we got to this point.

We arrived in Silver
City early in the afternoon on March 8. Anxious to get to our new home, we
declined the generous offer of our friends to spend the night at their house
and went out to the new homestead.

Spring in New Mexico,
particularly here in the mountains, offers a tremendous spread in temperatures
between day and night. The bright sunshine (pale former Alaskans call it brutal
sunshine) during the day raises the temperature to the upper sixties. At night,
the clear, dry air allows the temperatures to plummet to freezing. This has an
effect on cold-blooded creatures such as lizards. In the heat of the day,
lizards scamper about occupying their time with lizardy activities like sunbathing,
eating bugs and doing pushups (apparently, lizards are all about physical
training). At night, they seek protection from the cold. Hiding under rocks
heated by the sun works, but for sheer, luxurious comfort a house with in-floor
heat can’t be beat. A warm, vacant house is a thermal magnet for chilly
lizards.

Even in June the clear nights can get chilly.

To say there are
lizards in our little patch of the world would be a gross understatement. We
have many lizards. We have hundreds of lizards. We have a plethora of lizards.
And all of them want to stay warm at night.

The problem with
lizards is they aren’t the brightest animal in the world. They are very clever
at finding a way into a house, but aren’t much at navigating a way out.
Consequently, when we arrived in March there was a reptilian welcoming
committee. Most scurried for cover when we walked in, which the dogs thought
was great sport, but there were many who had overstayed their visit and had
perished. Little desiccated lizard bodies littered the floors.

The first order of
business was to sweep up the dead ones and round up the live ones for eviction.
Watson, the little dog, was invaluable in flushing them out of hiding so I
could snatch them up. Holmes, the big dog, was of no help. He would
occasionally swat at one with his paw which, more often than not, left a
detached tail wiggling on the floor. Following an hour, or so, of manly lizard
hunting I declared the house a lizard-free zone.

Definitely NOT a lizard-free zone.

Not so. Over the next
few weeks indoor lizard sightings and evictions (when I was fast enough)
continued at a pace of roughly five per day.

While Mrs. Poynor
claims not to be afraid of lizards, she won’t handle them and has been known to
emit loud, high pitched sounds when surprised by an unexpected lizard. One managed
to find its way into the laundry basket and elicited a startled shriek. A day
later, while moving furniture in the second bedroom five little burglars
scampered from under a couch resulting in a respectable Irish clog dance.
Shortly after that, a crystal shattering scream came from the sewing room when
Mrs. Poynor lifted some cloth off the ironing board and one of the reptilian
invaders ricocheted off her in a frantic dive for freedom. That was the last
straw. Figuring out how they were getting in, and correcting the breach, became
a top priority.

Following the initial
roundup, the majority of lizard activity had been restricted to one end of the
house, mostly in the second bedroom. As I pondered the possibility of a gap
created by the Saltillo tile at the threshold to the door leading outside, a
head poked out from underneath the threshold. Bingo!

“I just figured out
where the lizards are coming in,” I announced proudly while rummaging through
the tool drawer.

After pumping almost
an entire tube of sealer under the threshold I was confident the invasions
would cease. However, two hours later I walked into the room and found a lizard
just inside the door. It didn’t run. In fact, it didn’t even move. It couldn’t
because its head was glued to the tile. Forensic examination found the lizard
to be expired due to its head being encapsulated in silicon sealer.

I guess lizards can’t
back up, and this particular one pushed its way through the uncured silicon,
covering its head and suffocating for the effort. After plugging the hole the
lone casualty of the Great Lizard Roundup had created, we have not had any
further indoor lizard issues. Let’s not talk about the centipede… just yet.